


constant trip

by tsukiakari



Series: Insomnia [4]
Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games), Nancy Drew – HER Interactive (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukiakari/pseuds/tsukiakari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wade finds out what Clara's been up to. He doesn't react well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	constant trip

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story out of chronological order, detailing what originally sent Wade to jail. I've set it in approximately 1998.

The evening's cold for autumn, clouds coating the sky like strips of dull cotton dyed orange. Even in the bar, heat is hard to find. He sits at his side of the bar, farthest from the windows, trying not to look at the sullen light outside and sipping at what little warmth he can get from his beer.

Behind him the door bangs shut, letting in a blast of icy air. He ignores it, very far from caring, his mind spinning its wheels for other thoughts. The look on Clara's face when he'd spoken to her, the way she'd waved a hand and ushered him out of her office, it twists acid into his stomach as though he's drinking lemon juice straight. Even the beer tastes bitter by the time he drinks another mouthful.

Someone slumps onto the bar stool next to him and leans forward on the counter. He risks a glance over and recognizes Tom McCullough, a docks worker he's only known in passing for years.

The moment he's looking at Tom, the man turns toward him, as though waiting for a signal. "Thornton." His voice is quiet and he barely nods toward the barkeep.

"Tom," he replies, pushing his glass to one side and watching carefully. He's been in his fair share of fights in this place, likely enough to cement his image as a miscreant in Clara's eyes, and Tom's gaze is more grim even than usual. "Anything the matter?"

"Got some news for you." Tom's voice sinks into a whisper. "I heard from someone livin' by the plant that they've been setting up a racket to raise the dead over there. Problem is, it ain't during the day."

It takes a moment for the idea to sink in. When it does, heat flashes over his body as though he'd drank whiskey instead of half-flat beer, and his eyes can't focus. Tom's unsmiling face and the worn-out water-stained bar, it almost vanishes from in front of him, all together with the muffled '70s rock. For once he can't feel the chill of the air, and for a minute his stomach twists in nausea.

"What did you just say?" he hears himself asking, forcing the words out.

Tom laughs dryly. "You heard me, Thornton. I said they're going the old route over there. My pal, he says the workers come out once a day, y'know? Lookin' like ghosts themselves." He smirks and shakes his head as the barkeep slides a mug of beer toward him. "Sure is a shame, ain't it?"

Suddenly the beer left in his mug looks like poison. He stands up, his throat too dry to answer, for all that Tom's question's as rhetorical as any philosophy. Getting money out of his wallet is more difficult than he'd have expected - he can still hardly see and his fingers are sweaty and shaking. Then he finally grabs some bill and tosses it onto the bar, and leaves.

The crisp air outside does nothing to calm him down. All he wants is to get at Clara, yell some sense into her, make her stop. No matter what she'd say about Tom, about his sources, he knows it's true. It's always true in the end.

He heads off down the street, struggling to keep his pace slower than a walk, for the only place he can think to go. The harsh irony of going to complain to his girlfriend would've made him laugh, on any other day. Today the most it does is take the smallest edge off his anger.

The minute he knocks on her door, she answers, with a grin on her face that tells him he's not getting anywhere. "Oh, Wade, honey, I was hoping you'd come by! C'mon in!" She steps aside to let him in. "I've just been doing a little reading..."

Her tiny coffee table's littered with books and loose pieces of paper, some of it spilling to the floor. He recognizes the book lying open on the couch, its yellowed pages tattered at the edges, and he nearly has to fight to breathe. All he needs, having her bringing up the old sins.

She snatches the book out of the way and sits down, still grinning. "You remember I'd wanted to know more about the circumstances of that summer cottage, right?"

"Van..." He sits down too, finds himself staring at the book in her hands, the name written on its cover.

She doesn't hear him. "Well, I'd never have thought to do it, but I looked a little further back in the book of names!" Triumphantly she waves the book in the air.

"Wait, Van." He tries again, gritting his teeth, hardly able to concentrate on everything she's pushing at him.

"See, it says here..." Flipping the book open, she leans toward him, pointing at a passage.

Before he knows it, his hand's shot out and knocked the book out of her grasp, and it careens across the room into a bent heap by the far wall. He looks at the research lying in a heap on the coffee table and very nearly pushes the whole thing over, clenching his hands into fists to keep himself from doing it. All he can hear is his heartbeat, loud in his ears.

He looks at her, and she's staring up at him, mixed surprise and fear in her eyes. "Wade, you okay?" Her voice is low.

"No. I'm not." Just speaking the words brings back what Tom said to him, what Clara said to him before that. "It's all happening again." For an instant he has to struggle with his voice to keep it from shaking. "Van, they're doing the same thing they did eighty years ago."

"What?" She leans forward again. "You mean the factory accident? No, no, they can't be. And anyway, what's that got to do with -"

"Stop it, Savannah!" He's on his feet, and she's shrinking back into the corner of the couch. The heat's back again, fury that should surprise him and doesn't, all of it underlaid with a bitterness harsh enough to kill. "Leave it alone! Leave this whole godforsaken mess alone! Why can't you let Charlotte rest in peace and help the present instead of the past?"

Slowly she stands up, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her eyes huge and stubborn and fixed on him. The silence stretches on and the coffee table all but begs to be kicked over.

Eventually she speaks, softly. "You...you need to get out of this town, Wade. We both do."

For the first time he looks at her. Her hair's in its messy braid, she's wearing a shirt with some unknown punk-rock band's logo splashed across it, and it only makes her look like some sort of backwoods Bette Davis. "Maybe I just need a distraction." The words sound awful but his throat is suddenly aching, and he doesn't care.

She walks up to him, meeting his gaze steadily. "You saying you want to break my windows or kiss me?"

One thing he's always loved about her, how straightforward she is. His family and their horrible name slips out of his mind, crowded out by wanting her. An answer to her question waits in his mind, but he can't speak it.

A smile flashes across her face, brilliant even though it's tainted with a wryness he knows instantly, and she rests a hand gently on his chest and kisses him. Somehow calmness radiates from her, and it makes him even more uneasy than before, wearing at his nerves with the awareness of her near him. He grabs her hand and pulls it away, wrapping his other arm around her waist to bring her closer.

She doesn't let him deepen the kiss and it stirs up a blind frustration, something he's familiar with and still doesn't know. His hand slips under her shirt to touch her skin, hot against his fingers. She shivers, pushing his jacket off with both hands.

By the time he breaks the kiss to breathe, it's starting to overwhelm him, multiplied by the confined anger still burning somewhere. He kisses her again, forcing her mouth open this time, holding onto her waist with both hands.

The phone starts to ring, a distant echo behind the deafening silence. He can feel her attitude changing as she hears it, and he pulls her closer, letting himself drink in the addictive warmth of her. Then she forces her hand between them, palm flat against his chest again, prying herself out of his hold.

Without looking at him she crosses the room and picks up the phone. He catches his breath, still tasting her, not even trying to work out whatever mixture of feelings are blended up in him. But in the absence of her distraction, the memories of what he'd heard return and he grits his teeth again. He barely notices her hang up the phone and stand quietly by it for a long moment.

"That was for you," she says at last, turning back to him. "Seems someone knew that you'd be here, if you weren't at your own place." She licks her lips, looking nervous.

He fights past his own thoughts to speak. "What? What'd they say? Something happen?"

"I can quote you verbatim." She shrugs her shoulders, eyes glinting with something more unsettled than she pretends to be. "Was a guy with a low voice, like he didn't wanna be heard. He said 'Tell Thornton tonight's a good time to go check things out.'"

The persistent trickle of memories turns into a flood and he goes all but blind again. "This can't be happening," he says to himself.

"Go ask Clara." Her voice is strong, even harsh, enough to break through his own angst. "Ask her what's been going on."

"I spoke to her already!" he snaps back. "I wanted to work for the company and she blew me off like a winter wind. Asking's not gonna do a single thing."

"What can it do to you now? How can it hurt?" She steps forward, and her gaze burns him now. "Go and try to make things right. If you're gonna get angry with me about that, it's the smallest thing you can do."

She's right - the knowledge of it makes him dizzy and angry. He forces himself to nod and grabs his jacket, heading for the door, keeping himself from thinking all the way. The knob is icy cold under his hand and she says nothing as he leaves.

By the time he's walked to Clara's house, the wind's cold enough to bring snow with it and he's struggling not to shiver. Lights shine out from the windows, pale yellow squares cast onto the sidewalk, like a scene from a cheap movie. Clara's husband answers the door, and again he belatedly remembers what the man looks like, but not his name.

Clara herself is in the living room, sitting on a settee that would have looked more comfortable in Thornton Hall itself. He's been in her house before, but he always has to fight back a laugh at how desperately she tried to evoke the family's old days with every bit of ostentatious decor. This time, he can't find it in himself to even smile.

"Didn't I see you already?" she asks, glancing up at him from the pages of a book with an expression of disinterest as carefully cultivated as the rosebushes in her garden.

He swallows hard and breathes slow, fighting. "I gotta talk to you, Clara. I've been hearing things."

"Well, then, you'd be better off going to Harper's psychiatrist, then, wouldn't you?" She speaks as calmly as a comedian delivering a line, without even a glimmer of humor in her eyes, and he hates her for it.

"You know what I mean." He steps forward, watching her eyes widen imperceptibly and her posture change. "Have you been locking people into the plant? Keeping them up all night doing their miserable work?"

"How dare you accuse me of those things!" She shoots to her feet, pointing a finger at the door, looking for all the world like a furious actress. "Get out of here, now!"

Her husband creeps into view, a dark figure at the edge of his vision. For a moment he hesitates, looking around her lavish living room, feeling more bitter than he could ever put to words. Then the phone call surfaces in his memory, and he knows exactly what to do.

On his way to the plant he finds a hammer somewhere, some place he doesn't remember. The whole time, with each step, his anger is building - anger at Clara, anger at the plant, anger at himself, anger at his entire family, anger at Savannah for even picking up the phone. If he doesn't do something soon he will explode.

The tall chain-link fence looms up in front of him before he's even realized that he's there. He smirks without any humor and takes off his jacket, tossing the thick leather over the top of the fence to shield his hands from the barbed iron. Climbing the fence is simple enough, and a moment later he's standing on the grounds.

The only thing in front of him is the plant, and the first thing he sees is its entrance, double doors set into an alcove and lit from above by a dimly flickering light. A huge industrial padlock holds both door handles closed, like the fist of doom.

Dread twists his stomach, and then he hears the dull sounds of machinery travel across the grass.

It's true.

The distance to the door takes a moment and then he whacks at the padlock with the hammer, the noise ringing in his ears, until it's broken on the ground. He opens the door and sees them, tired people wearing old clothing, staring at him as though he's an alien landed on the earth. The machines are deafening, towering over him like remnants of the Industrial Revolution. For an instant he's yanked back in time by the exhaustion on their faces, the darkness of the night outside and the brightness of the moon.

He stops thinking the moment he throws the hammer into the machine, the moment it grinds and shrieks to a halt and billows thick choking black smoke.

It's only when the sirens start to wail that his mind comes back.


End file.
